Normal Again
by marcus aure1ius
Summary: “Absolutely every way that a world could possibly be is a way that some world is.” Harry Potter verse.
1. 1

Disclaimer: Names, characters, places, and incidents from Harry Potter and Buffy the Vampire Slayer belong to J. K. Rowling and Joss Whedon, respectively.

"Absolutely every way that a world could possibly be is a way that some world is."—David Lewis, _On the Plurality of Worlds_

1

The world dropped away as our plane took off from the runway. Clouds whited out the view from my window. Mom was sitting to my left and Dad to her left. It still catches me off-guard, sometimes, my parents. In my mind I'd grown so used to their absence that it seemed to me they'd always been gone, so that every now and then I had to do a double take just to make sure they were really there. As if reading my thoughts, Mom squeezed my hand. Her smile was brilliant. Dad flashed me a grin as he thumbed through the duty-free merchandise ads in the airline magazine, the pages crisp, snapping as they were flipped. I felt weightlessness in my stomach that had nothing to do with the angle of the plane's ascent. Blue now, the sky. The sun stayed on our tail the entire flight, lighting the way.

-

Our new house was a large square two-story identical to every other house on the street. I took a look around while Mom and Dad sealed the deal with the landlady, thank you's and congratulatory handshakes all over the place. The landlady was kind enough to leave us most of her furniture, which had an Old World charm—although they probably don't call it that over here. Do they call English muffins English muffins, I wonder. Two fireplaces, one in the kitchen and one in the living room. A door from the kitchen leading to the backyard. Four rooms upstairs. The backyard fenced in by neatly trimmed hedges of some kind of evergreen. Flowerbeds bordering the house and trees with big broad green canopies in the yard, some bottom branches low enough to climb.

It was midday and the sky was a cloudy gray-blue. The air astringent from a man in his white undershirt mowing his lawn three houses down the street. In the backyard I kicked off my flip flops and lay on my back under a tree and watched the leaves hanging overhead quiver in the breeze. The blades of grass were springy against my toes. Mom saw me through the kitchen window and came out. She plopped down on the grass beside me, knees drawn to her chest and head resting on them. We listened to the breeze whistle quietly through the trees.

"I can see why Dad liked it here," I said.

Mom sighed, a content sigh. "Everything's so beautiful." Sunlight shining through gaps in the canopy spilled over her. Where it fell on her hair the individual strands gleamed rainbow colors. I'd never seen her more beautiful than in that moment. She smiled and said, "I think I can fall in love with this place."

"Yeah."

Before long the movers arrived with our shipment of personal effects. Over the weekend we threw ourselves into the formidable task of making the house our home. The house filled up with bookends, Kokopelli, stacks of family videos, framed pictures of me grinning chipmunk-cheeked and in varying stages of toothlessness. The trashcan overflowed with cardboard boxes and bubble wrap. Dad was on the phone all day with the electric, water, and whatever other company. Mom devoted hours to arranging and rearranging tchotchkes on the mantelplaces. I tacked paper butterflies to one side of my bedroom wall in phalanx formation and tried to forget the way Angel traced his fingers along the tips of the butterflies' wings the night he slept on my bedroom floor.

-

The day I came home we said nothing on the drive back, strangers to each other after the six odd months apart. I sat on my hands in the backseat and gazed out of the window. The bright morning sun cast everything in an overexposed hard glare, as if I were viewing the world through a camera lens. The colorful summer clothes people wore seemed as gaudy as clown costumes. Dad glanced at me in the rearview mirror every time he braked at a light or stop sign. By the time we arrived at the house my hands were numb. Mom turned in the front passenger seat to look back at me. "Well, this is us," she said. Her smile had a tight-lipped awkwardness about it.

The front door it seemed to swing back on its hinges in slow motion as Dad opened it. The curved glass of the peephole caught the sun and flared. Hot pinprick sensations shot through my hands. I stopped in the entrance astounded by the sheer volume of stuff the house held—a small weave basket for keys sitting on a stand by the door, half-used candles on the coffee table, potted plants on the windowsill—homey things. "Welcome home, honey," said my Dad. He gave my shoulder a squeeze and went upstairs with my suitcase.

Mom wrapped her arm around the back of my waist. "Do you want to take a look around? Everything's the same as before. But I thought you might want to." Her face was so close I could make out the fine pores on the side of her nose. She met my gaze and kissed me on the forehead. I couldn't believe she was standing there, next to me.

I nodded and followed her around downstairs and then up to my room. Dad was sitting on the bed, straightening up the stuffed animals. I picked up Mr. Gordo and hugged it to my chest. Then I stood in front of the dresser and studied the pictures that were tucked into the frame of the mirror. The girl in the mirror, like the one in all the pictures, was unrecognizable to me—soft-cheeked and curvy, bright-eyed, blond hair down to her waist. I watched my parents watching me in the mirror. Finally Dad said, "How are you feeling, pumpkin?"

"Fine." I turned around. "You guys cleaned my room."

Mom shrugged, her gaze sweeping absentmindedly around the room.

Dad looked from me to her. He folded his hands in his lap.

I sniffed the air and grimaced. "I still smell like Lysol. I think I'll take a bath."

Dad sprang from the bed in a blur of movement. "I'll get you a set of towels," he said, already halfway down the hall.

Mom stepped toward me and reached for Mr. Gordo. She held it up to her face, nuzzled it, and then handed it back to me. She said she'd kept it on her nightstand the whole time I was gone. My throat swelled up and I moved clumsily to embrace her. It felt like homecoming.

In the bathroom I found that Dad had already drawn a bubble bath. I stripped out of my clothes and scrutinized myself in the mirror, trying to get used to what I saw. How could I only be fifteen years old? I felt jaded and ancient—like one who returned from the dead. I heard knocking on the door and then Mom's voice asking me what I wanted for lunch. I said it didn't matter. The water in the tub was cold by the time I stepped in.

For lunch we drove to my favorite Japanese restaurant downtown. As we unshelled edamamae and sipped our miso soups Dad leaned forward in his chair and told me about his recent trip to London, the new firm he'd be working in, the charming house he'd found for us in the burbs. While he was talking he wouldn't stop beaming, as if his excitement was too much for him to contain. Mom held his hand and said she couldn't wait to visit a grocery list of museums and galleries there. I sat and listened and thought about Giles, Angel, Wesley, Gwendolyn Post, and Spike. Then I pinched with my chopsticks a dime-sized dollop of wasabi and placed it underneath my tongue.

When we started on the green tea ice cream Dad turned to me and asked if I was really okay with moving to another country so soon—two weeks is barely enough time for you to get resituated here, Mom added—and having to adjust to a new life there. While he said this he twisted a corner of the tablecloth into a little ring around his finger.

"Why wouldn't I be okay with it," I said. "I'm already adjusting to a new life."

By the uncertain looks on their faces I realized either of them knew what to make of this. So I grinned and said, "Besides, I'll have a better chance of running into Gavin Rosendale there."

Mom rolled her eyes and stole a spoonful of my ice cream. "Look out London, our single white female daughter's on the prowl."

Back at the house Dad turned on the TV in the living room and settled in for some quality sports entertainment. Mom pulled on gloves and went into the backyard to weed the garden. They were either making an effort not to crowd me or making an effort to avoid me. I stood in the middle of my bedroom with my hands on my hips. For a panic-stricken moment I worried I'd never be able to think of anything to say to them or to know where to look or how to act. I stared at the digital alarm clock on my nightstand and watched the numbers change. When it was five o'clock I went downstairs.

Mom was in the kitchen making dinner. I hopped onto the counter and watched her rinse leaves of lettuce under the faucet, the water hissing as it hit the sink. She transferred the lettuce to a strainer and sliced half a head of onion and then a tomato, the knife clinking rhythmically against the glass cutting board. The lively rapid-fire voices of the sports commentators streamed in from the living room. "Honey, can you grab the shredded cheese and dressing from the fridge?"

I hopped off the counter, opened the refrigerator door, and looked inside. "Which kind do you want?"

"You pick."

I'd forgotten that this was what normal people do. They weren't forced to eat salads with ranch and yellow cheddar every time. For three months when Dawn was thirteen she'd drench everything she ate in ranch dressing—mashed potatoes, string beans, cake. I must've stood with the refrigerator door open for a long time because Mom cleared her throat. I took out the balsamic vinaigrette and the bottle of parmesan cheese. I realized then, that from this day on I would have to banish Dawn and every trace of Sunnydale from memory, knowing I'd miss them something awful. I already did. But to be able to hear Mom puttering in the kitchen, to be able to look in on Dad yelling at the TV in the living room—what I wouldn't give.

-

The following week Dad started his new job, taking the car with him. After breakfast Mom and I went down to the basement and stared at the stacks of unopened boxes piled on the floor. She put her hands on her hips and said, "They'll still be here tomorrow." We rode the bus into town with the window down. She let me sit by it, though she'd never gone sightseeing in England either. I notice these things now, the little concessions a mother makes for her child out of love. Rows of houses flew by. Then the street widened into multiple lanes and we were in the city. Mom and I made the requisite tourist rounds—Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey—and bought fish and chips from a street vendor for lunch. We had so much fun that we were back in the London the next day, and the next, and the next.

-

Thursday we were in the British Museum. Mom had gone off to ogle the pottery and tapestries. She's always favored the more tactile art forms, if I remembered correctly. I browsed through a collection of paintings on loan from Madrid, all having to do with heaven and hell, when one stopped me dead in my tracks. It was an oil painting of a burning countryside the size of our big-screen TV. A hunting dog gnawing on the face of a small child. A skeleton on horseback chasing down a crowd of fleeing people with a scythe in its outstretched hand. Men lashed to cartwheels mounted on poles. A skeleton wearing a rucksack crouching over a prone man, slitting his throat. People fallen into the river, drowning. Ships sinking in the harbor. The sky blackened by the smoke of distant burning cities. And everywhere, death.

I glanced at the placard below the painting—_The Triumph of Death _by Pieter Bruegel the Elder—and just had to laugh. A few people standing nearby gave me the evil eye so I quieted down. Dr. Michelson's voice, as clear and close as the day he spoke this, floated through my head. It's not just you, you know. Every single one of us starts out thinking we're some special breed of human. No one wants to let go of the fantasies, the grand dreams from childhood, the belief that the world revolves around me and me only. But at some point you have to. It's a part of growing up. I remembered him smiling conspiratorially at me. Then he said something like, you're just taking a while, which is perfectly understandable, considering that profligate imagination of yours. He's right, of course, and I moved on.

When Mom found me in the museum gift shop her whole face was lit up. She joined me at the jewelry counter and eyed the display of Italian blown-glass pendants I'd been looking through. I could tell that she wasn't really looking at them. "See anything you like?" she said.

"What's got you looking like the cat that ate the canary?"

"Nothing." She picked up a blue and gold pendant from the display and draped it on her hand to admire the way the glass caught the light.

I raised my eyebrows. "Really? You don't have a 'nothing' face."

She put the pendant back on its hook on the rack and turned to me. "Okay, not really nothing. But I don't want to get my hopes up, that's all. I was over at the Ming dynasty exhibit looking at the collection of vases when I noticed that two or three of the placards seemed to be mismatched given the shapes and firings of the pieces. I made a remark about it the woman next to me and she seemed taken aback so I explained why I said what I said. She walked up right against the glass case and scrutinized the pieces in question for a couple of moments. Then she turned to me and introduced herself. And it turns out that she's the associate director of this museum. How about that?"

"Wow."

Mom nodded, her grin spanning the width of her face. "So she hands me her business card and tells me to call if I'm ever interested in working here, she could always use someone with such a discriminating eye for art."

It was selfish, but already I was thinking of how much I'd miss her company when she started working.

"I can't believe it." She enveloped me in a hug. "I just can't believe it."

"Wow," I said again.

-

The following day Mom had an interview scheduled with the associate director. All throughout breakfast Mom beamed, adjusting the utensils by her plate, the scarf tied around her neck. She was so happy that I couldn't help but be happy for her. After my parents left I cleared the kitchen table and piled the dishes into the sink and ran water over them. A little later I found myself standing in front of the door to the basement, my hand frozen on the door handle. Pathetic, but I was afraid to go down there alone. I washed the dishes instead.

Over dinner Mom announced that she'd been hired to an acquisitions position, with a promise from the associate director of "advancement as soon as the old codgers start retiring." Dad was supportive and seemed pleased about the prospect of additional income. She told us all about her interview and her new coworkers and the work and the museum before she noticed that I hadn't said anything.

"Honey, do you think I should take the job?"

Dad paused and looked at me, too.

"Of course you should! It's what you've always wanted, isn't it?"

"Yes, but." Mom frowned.

"No buts," I said, firmly. "I want you to take it, Mom. I really do."

-

Mom's first day on the job I woke up early and decided to take a stroll to explore the neighborhood. As I rounded a corner I saw a brown owl with what looked like a roll of paper tied to its leg fly into someone's open first-floor window. I did a double take, but whatever I had seen was gone. On Magnolia Road I discovered a park with railings and a gate that opened to the street. The sun had just risen and the park was empty. I entered through the park gate and crossed the field to the play area that was equipped with a swing set, a merry-go-round (no dead children lying on this one), seesaws, a sandbox, and a slide. All the swings were broken except one. I gave it a try. The chains holding the rubber seat were rusty, creaking on the upswing and downswing, and every once in a while I got a whiff of their sour metal smell. With the wind whooshing in my ears the world rushed forward, paused for a moment, retreated back, and again and again. I stayed on the swing until other people came.

On my way back I spotted an old lady trudging down the other side of the street. She was favoring the arm she was using to carry a bulging knit bag whose contents clanked with each step. I crossed the street and caught up to her.

"Excuse me, ma'am. Would you like some help with that?" I gestured at her bag.

She turned around and squinted at me, creasing the skin around her eyes in deep lines, to see me under the already glaring sun.

I took the time to inspect her as well. Up close her appearance was weird—a hairnet covered her grizzly gray hair that was falling out of its bun and short strands of some kind of animal hair clung in clumps to her tartan housecoat. She had on matching tartan house slippers over stockings.

A second or two later she nodded and handed me her bag. "That's right kind of you, miss. Not many kids these days would offer to help an old lady with her shopping bag."

"I thought the British were supposed to be all prim and proper?" I fell into step with her. Her bag was heavier than I'd expected. I looked at it and saw through the knitted-netting that it was full of tins of cat food.

She gave me an incredulous sidelong look. "Sorry to disappoint but most of them are hooligans, if you ask me. Especially that Dursley boy and his gang."

Unseen dogs barked in the living rooms and backyards of houses we passed.

"Who're they? Not a real gang, I hope."

She scoffed. "No. Just your average neighborhood hoodlums. You must not be from around here. They'd never let a pretty thing like you get away that easy."

"Actually, I am from around here. My family and I just moved into the neighborhood."

"Hang on"—she studied me with renewed interest—"you must be them new Americans over on Azalea Drive."

"One of them anyway." How did she even know about us? "How do you know about us?"

"The whole neighborhood knows, silly girl. It's not every day we have new colonials living in our midst."

We reached Wisteria Walk and turned left.

"This is my street," she stopped and said to me. "You don't have to walk me the whole way."

She reached for her bag but I held on to it.

"I'll take you to your door." I grinned. "Just in case one of those neighborhood hoodlums is lying in wait to egg your house or something. What if you can't fend them off by yourself?"

"Ha! Now you're just taking the mickey." But she smiled as she said this and let me keep carrying the bag as we started walking again.

"You realize that I have no idea what you just said, right?"

"Oh, right, I forgot." She laughed kindly. "It means you're having a laugh."

I wasn't sure I understood. "Oh."

She led me up the footpath. When we got to her doorstep she took the knit bag in her wizened hands. "Well, if you ever need vernacular lessons, you know where I live."

"Thanks, ma'am."

"No, thank _you_, miss—Good lord, where are my manners? I didn't even ask you your name yet." She switched the bag into her left hand and extended the right to me. "I'm Mrs. Arabella Figg. Pleased to meet you."

I shook it. Her hand was small and boney, the skin as thin and slack as rice paper. "Buffy Summers. Pleased to meet you, too."

Mrs. Figg grimaced. "Buffy—what kind of a name is that?"

"Mine. What kind of a name is Arabella?"

She chuckled. "You've got a point there, Ms. Summers."

As I set off down her footpath she called, "Hang on! Have you eaten breakfast yet?"

"No, I haven't."

"Well, don't just stand there! Come in and eat with me." She stepped forward and took me by the elbow with her free hand. "I want you to meet my cats."

"Um, I don't want to impose."

"I wouldn't be asking you if you were." She tugged on my elbow. "Come on. Let's not wait for the grass to grow."

Too much solitude is dangerous for you, said Dr. Michelson. Social interaction goes a long way, keep that in mind.

I let her pull me back to her doorstep and through the door.

A lethal combination of cabbage and cat smell hit me smack in the face as soon as we were inside. I feared she'd feed me stewed cabbage for breakfast. Mrs. Figg sat me down at her kitchen table and poured me a cup of tea from the kettle on the stove. I could only assume that the circular piece of crocheted fabric covering the kettle was a tea cozy, though the cat ears on it threw me off for a second. I added milk and sugar to my cup, the brown liquid marbling with white before turning into a camel color, and took a sip, relieved that it didn't taste like cabbage. As I leaned back in my chair a fuzzy streak leaped into my lap. I glanced down and saw that it was a small cat with dark gray fur on its back that lightened to a spotted brown down its sides and belly. It meowed and nuzzled my face. Its slight weight warm and comfortable on my lap. I told the cat it was a pretty kitty and rubbed the fur on its neck and back.

That's Mr. Tibbles, said Mrs. Figg as she tipped the tins of cat food from her bag onto the kitchen counter. She left four tins on the counter and stacked the rest in a cupboard. Then she pulled out a can opener from a drawer and began opening the tins. As soon she lifted the top off the first tin Mr. Tibbles bounded out of my lap and three other cats dashed into the kitchen.

"Hello, my darlings," Mrs. Figg cooed as she put out four dishes of the wet cat food, the porcelain clinking against the tile floor.

At this, all the cats raised their heads to regard her. It was a little creepy.

"That one there is Mr. Snowy," she said, pointing to the white Persian. "That one's Tufty"—she pointed to the calico with its fur sticking up in tufts. "And that one's Mr. Paws," she said, pointing to the cat that was all black except for its four white paws.

"You're very systematic in naming your cats," I said.

Mrs. Figg, her back turned to me, was busy frying something on the stove. "That I am," she said and waved her spatula in response.

I watched the cats eat, admiring the way their shoulder blades moved underneath the skin on their backs, like water over pebbles in a stream.

Later, Mrs. Figg set down a plate in front of me. Two eggs, an English muffin, and three strips of bacon.

"Wow. Thanks!"

By the shrewd look that passed over Mrs. Figg's face I realized I didn't hide my relief very well.

"Okay, this'll probably sound stupid but do you guys call this an English muffin or just a muffin?" I pointed with my fork at the muffin in question.

Mrs. Figg raised her eyebrows. "Do you call American cheese American cheese?" She made a gagging noise at the back of her throat. "Horrid stuff, by the way. What sorry excuse for dairy product."

Giles used to say that word, horrid.

-

The front door swung violently back as I was pulling out the key from my pocket. Mom stood on the other side. Her face livid. Her stance rigid. She sucked in a big breath. I held mine.

"WHERE the hell have you been, young lady?" The WHERE barked and snapped.

"I-I went walking." I glanced at my wristwatch. It was twenty-five past eight.

Mom kept her eyes trained on my face. "Well! You should have said something! If you didn't come back in half an hour I was going to call the police! How was I supposed to know you weren't running away?"

Dad came up behind her in his work clothes. He laid on her shoulder a hand that she tried to shrug off. "Joyce, if you keep yelling at her like that she just might run away." He backed her out of the doorway so I could pass through. Then he shut the door behind me and put both hands on Mom's shoulders and massaged them, which only seemed to irritate her.

I adopted a sheepish expression. "Mom, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wig you out. I just wanted to get out there before it got hot."

"See?" Dad said to Mom, his mouth close to her ear. "What did I tell you? Nothing to worry about."

Mom looked from him to me, not convinced. Finally she said, "I heard you go out around six thirty. You expect me to believe that you've been walking around for the past two hours?"

"No. I helped an old lady carry her groceries home and then she made me have breakfast with her."

She opened her mouth to say something but did not. "Oh," she said, after a pause. I got the impression that neither of them believed me.

Dad winked at me and dropped his hands from her shoulders. He checked his watch. "Oh shoot, we gotta go," he said as he grabbed his briefcase and keys.

Mom stared at me. Then she sighed, her whole face seeming to sag with it, making her look older than she was. "You should've left us a note, at least. I just wish that you'd think of others before yourself once in a while."

My cheeks burned as though she'd slapped me across the face. I bit my lip and said nothing. I walked them to the door and watched them get into the car. Mom rolled down her window and called, "Lunch is in the fridge." Dad waved, his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. The gravel crunched underneath the tires as the car pulled out of the driveway. I stood at the door as the car receded from sight, listening to the rumble of the engine fade. Somewhere down the street a lawnmower sputtered to life. Family, they always know just where it hurts.

-

In the next days life settled into a routine, more or less. Every morning I woke up when the dark and silence was still so thick it felt like a heavy velvet stage curtain over the world. I'd let myself out into the backyard and wait for the sky to lighten. If my parents noticed this they haven't mentioned it to me. The good thing about institutionalization is that everything you do after getting out seemed sane. The bad thing about institutionalization is that everything you do after getting out seemed insane. Besides, I wouldn't stop even if they did notice. Because each morning when the light flooded and everything around me turned radiant all at once my heart swelled to be in the presence of something so lovely, her namesake.

I've taken up other habits, too, to fill the time when my parents are away. It amazes me how much time there is in a day when you don't have school or friends or other commitments. There is time, and time, and time, especially when you wake up before dawn and have trouble falling asleep until one or two past midnight. A couple of days ago I walked to the local library and registered for an account. When Dad saw the stack of books in my room he laughed and said, "Who would've ever thought that you'd pick up a book willingly?" He crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes at me. "Are you really my daughter? Or are you a pod person?" I shrugged and said in my best robot voice, "Yes, lowly earthling. Beneath this valley girl exterior beats the heart of a true bookworm…pod." That just made him laugh harder.

I walk a lot these days, everywhere, for hours on end. At first I stuck close to the neighborhood—the park on Magnolia Road, the corner convenience store, the rows of identical houses with dogs barking whenever you were within a half-block radius and people watching you from their lawns and from behind their windows. But I've been venturing farther and farther lately. Some days I walked by Stonewall High where school was still in session. Occasionally I'd pass just as the bell rings, an urgent endless clanging that seemed to emanate from the boxy brick building itself. Other days I walked past the cluster of shops some miles away, past the local (ten-pin, as they call it) bowling alley, past the grocery store, past the beauty salon where I had my hair chopped off, past the post office, past the country club Dad is thinking of joining. Sometimes I'd pick a street and walk down it as far as it went. Other times I'd count the number of small birds roosting on the wires running between telephone poles and walk the same number of blocks and then repeat in a different direction.

Occasionally I heard Dr. Michelson asking me why I walked so much. He said once that questioning one's motives is an excellent step toward self-awareness. What are you looking for? Dr. Michelson's voice said. Yourself? Even in my head he could be such a smartass. In the mirror my arms and legs were leaner, my hair no longer long and Barbie-like. People got used to seeing me on the road (on the wrong side the days I forgot I was no longer living in L.A.). At any rate the dogs had stopped barking so loud.

-

Saturday, after a long drive we were at the beach, which was rocky with little sand and not very beach-like. The sky a pearly expanse, the sun high and a dull diffuse yellow through it. A wind was blowing, whipping and snapping my hair. It was warm but the water cold. That didn't stop Dad though. He'd changed into his swimming trunks and was easing his way, timidly, into the churning surf. A wave came and splashed his thighs, the white foam leaping. "Crud, it's cold!" he shouted as he rubbed the palms of his hands together. The soaked bottoms of his trunks stuck to his legs, making his swimming trunks look more like bloomers. Mom laughed and shot me a here-we-go look. She was sitting on a beach chair beside me, a bestseller open in her lap with the bottle of sunscreen as a makeshift paperweight on the left page. The ocean crinkled like a navy sheet. The air had a sharp saltiness to it I could almost taste. She turned away from me to check up on Dad. By now all we could see of him was the round back of his head, hair plastered like a slick brown swim cap, bobbing in the water. The idea of Mom and Dad being apart was such an inviolable constant in my memory that I can't seem to wrap my head around their togetherness, that Mom and Dad were Mom-and-Dad. I love these weekend trips we've been going on, the three of us.

-

Another Monday. I walked past the school in the afternoon. The windows of the brick building were unlit and the cement play yard empty. School was out for summer. On my way back for dinner I decided to stop by the park on Magnolia Road. I climbed over the railing and sat with my back against it at the edge of the park. Nearest to me was the play area where a bunch of toddlers were playing in the sandbox with bright-colored plastic shovels that they wielded with the jerky movements little kids whose muscles have yet to learn control and grace always seem to have. Their mothers or nannies sat on the bench nearby and looked on, alternately smiling at their toddlers' goo-goo gaga voices and frowning at the dirt smudges on their baby clothes.

Out in the field a group of middle-school-age kids were playing hide-and-seek. A boy with his legs sticking out of his shorts like toothpicks was it. He covered his eyes with both hands. Even though he was about thirty yards away I could hear him counting and make out the screen-print Mortal Kombat t-shirt he was wearing. Have my eyesight and hearing always been this good? It boggles my mind that I can remember six years' of stuff that had never happened but so little about stuff that had happened just six months ago. I watched the other kids scamper away alone or in twos and threes in search for good hiding spots. Two of them crouched behind a clomp of bushes. Another disappeared through the park gate. The rest ran through the play area into the knot of trees by the railing. I shook my head. No future secret agents here.

It boy was standing in the middle of the field, hands over eyes, counting. It was late in the afternoon and the sun fell warm on my skin. The air carried an earthy fragrance and the sparkling laughter of the toddlers in the sandbox in waves like the soundtrack of summer. At the count of forty, five juvenile-delinquent-type teenage boys raced through the park gate on their bikes. They set their bikes down on the grass and their sights on it boy, who was making his way to fifty, completely oblivious. Immediately, I felt a shift in the mothers and nannies sitting on the benches. They jumped out of their seats and started snatching up their things and throwing them into their oversized totes before snatching up their toddlers and securing them into their strollers. The toddlers protested the sudden rude removal with high-pitched squeals, which the grownups ignored. Seconds later the play area was deserted. What an odd thing to be reminded of, the common cruelty of children, when for so long my head had been swimming in much bigger and badder matters.

Some of the kids in hiding came out from their hiding places at the commotion but shrank back so fast when they saw the juvie gang it was as if they'd never left at all. When I turned back to it boy he had finally uncovered his eyes. But it was too late. The juvies had him surrounded, the five of them closing in on him in a circle. It boy's face twisted in horror—his eyes red and bugging out, his mouth gone slack. The circle shrank. In desperation it boy tried to sprint through a gap, franticly, the way a moth trapped inside a streetlamp zigzags around trying to find a way out. But one of the juvies—the fattest one with a tuft of wavy blond hair on top of his head and a middle shaped like a big wine barrel, but with the broad shoulders of a future linebacker—caught him by the back of his shirt and knocked him to the ground, hard.

It boy didn't get up. His yellow Mortal Kombat shirt rumpled and stained where he had fallen on the grass. His rusty brown hair rustier than ever with the added dirt. Tears streaked down his face. He wiped at his eyes with the backs of his balled-up hands. I was surprised that he didn't try to fight back. As he cried his boney shoulders rattled. I stood up and walked toward them. Dr. Michelson said time after time that I suffered from an overextended hero complex. He was obviously a sage among men. "Come on! Get up, you little tit! What? Are you gonna throw a wobbler all day, you lily-livered pansy?" taunted the fat one as I approached them. I could practically see the spit spraying from his mouth. The other four whooped in laughter as they prodded it boy with little snap kicks. They were so busy bullying that none of them saw me until I was right up beside them.

I stepped between two of the juvies. "Come on, your mom wants you home for dinner," I said this loud and pulled it boy to his feet.

He was so frazzled that he let me pull him along in the direction of the park gate. The juvies, too, so surprised that they just stood there gawking as we walked away. It didn't last, of course. In about two seconds they caught up to us. It boy's hand, slippery with tears, flinched in mine.

"Who the bloody hell are you?" asked the fat one, and apparent ringleader.

I pulled it boy along, walking in long quick strides. His crying had been replaced by erratic hiccupping. "I'm his third cousin fives times removed." I squeezed it boy's hand as I said this. He caught the drift and kept his mouth shut. I glared at blondie the bully, who on top of having a wine barrel chest had a face like a cantaloupe, but meatier.

This seemed to stump blondie because he halted his step, his mouth open but no sound coming out. Naturally all of his posse stopped as well. Sheep mentality, got to love it.

Once we reached the gate I let go of it boy's hand and risked a backward glance. The juvies hadn't bothered to catch up to us again.

It boy whispered to me between hiccups, "You just made that up, right? I don't think third cousin fives times removed is possible." He scratched his head with his free hand but hit a tender spot and whimpered. He was a cute kid, with big cow eyes like wet marbles from the crying and tiny freckles all over his face—they were even on his eyelids when he blinked.

"Yep, don't kill yourself thinking about it." I patted his back, gently. "So, which way do we go? I might as well walk you home."

He pointed left. "Thanks, by the way." He hiccupped through his smile.

"Don't mention it," I said, "literally. Don't mention it."

He gave me a look but shrugged. "All right."

"Just"—I affected a cough—"remember next time that it's okay to peek."

"Okay."

On it boy's shirt Liu Kang's chest bulged like the underside of a lobster. Dr. Michelson said that he advised a lot of his other patients with hero-complexes to find release in video games or role-playing. When I laughed Dr. Michelson did, too. But, he said, I wouldn't want to wish more dungeons and dragons on you.

-

After walking it boy home, I went home myself. In the afternoon I climbed up the oak tree in my backyard with a book, and sat with my feet dangling off the branch. The bark was rough against my skin and the leaves hung over me like a giant rustling green umbrella. After a while I saw over the book a black cat skip into the yard, its white feet barely touching the grass, its tail sticking straight upward with the tip curved like a question mark. Hello, Mr. Paws, I said. It came to the foot of the oak and stared up at me with its ears cocked back and its tail lowered and still. Then with a sudden lunge it scaled the tree, its paws, claws extended, hugging the trunk. If you've never see a cat climb a tree, it's pretty spectacular. "Hi Mr. Paws," I said as it jumped into my lap and butted its head against my chest. I petted it, feeling its eyebrows twitch under my hand, the delicate bones of its head, the soft warmth of its coat. There was a roll of parchment the size of a cigarette stub tied to its collar with a rubber band. I detached the parchment and unrolled it. Afternoon tea at three tomorrow, please come if you can, was written in Mrs. Figg's left-leaning loopy script. I tucked the note in my pocket and returned to my book, Mr. Paws sprawled across my lap, its tail now and then curling and uncurling languidly.

I still wonder whether Mrs. Figg sent out all of her kitties with messages tied to their collars with the hope that one of them would at some point find me at my house or whether she sent only one each time and somehow, inexplicably, it knew where to go and what to do. I never got around to asking the first time it happened. Now I'm glad I didn't. It would've spoiled the mystery.

-

The next morning I woke up with the pressure of Spike's mouth against the hollow of my throat, the skin of his palms on my breasts callused like sandpaper. The feel of him moving inside me, heat and pain in between my legs. I pressed in my eyelids with the heels of my palms until I saw stars pop underneath. My heart turned over in my chest. I lay in bed and stared at the window until I heard my parents leave. Slate-colored clouds rolled across the sky like a gigantic bloated sodden blanket, leaching the color out of the world below. Then I got up and rummaged through my closet and found my rubber boots.

Outside the air had taken on an oppressive presence—all heaviness and static electricity. I walked along the road with no raincoat and no umbrella, watching the sky. Halfway to the bowling alley my vision brightened for a split second as if thousands of light bulbs had flashed all at once. Then a booming crack like a canon shot through the heavens. Lightning streaked across the sky, white and violet and spidery. Thunder caromed off the clouds. Then the rain falling in sheets, soaking my clothes instantaneously. Droplets collected on my eyelashes like runoff along the eaves.

The rain was relentless, deafening. Everything drooped and smelled different—the trees, the grass, the dirt, the asphalt. I walked on, my skin numb from the onslaught. Some car driving by pulled over, a window rolled down, and some stranger's face asked if I needed a ride. I shook my head no, I'm fine, thank you. I could walk forever in this, I didn't say. The bowling alley loomed like a forsaken block of concrete, I passed it and walked on. I walked farther than I'd ever walked before. I looked at my wristwatch and had to hold the face up to my eyes to make out the numbers, but the screen was blank.

On the walk home a sheet of moving water glazed the sidewalks. My boots made rude squelchy noises that made me laugh. There was a message on the answering machine. Mom had called to tell me about the severe thunderstorm warning in effect. Don't leave the house if you don't have to, she said. I peeled off my drowned clothes and wrung the water out of them before throwing them in the washer, scarfed down the leftovers from the fridge, and then showered. By the time I dried my hair and picked out something to wear it was almost three. I grabbed an umbrella out of the coat closet by the door and pulled my rubber boots back on.

Rain had collected in a dip in the road, two feet high. Some of it sloshed over the rim of my boots as I waded through. Almost to Mrs. Figg's doorstep my umbrella flipped inside-out. The door opened as I was straightening out the umbrella. Inside the door, Mrs. Figg with a teacup and saucer one in hand, Mr. Paws standing between her feet. Her face registered surprise even as she was pulling me by the elbow through the doorway. Her voice high and urgent. "You poor thing! Come in, come in!" She set her tea down and took the umbrella from my hand, propped it against the wall, and straightened to take in my appearance. "It's raining cats and dogs out there!" She frowned at the rain before closing the door. "I thought you weren't coming. I was going to phone but then I realized I never got your number." She finished saying this with a shake of her head.

Rain droplets down my arms like clear beads, I wiped them off, leaving goose bumps in their place.

Mr. Paws circled me and paused to sniff my boots.

I picked it up and held it in my arms.

"Yeah, I noticed," I said to Mrs. Figg. "I'll remember to leave you my number this time." Rainwater inside my boots. I wiggled my toes. "Can I take these shoes off?"

Her eyes dropped to my bright yellow rubber boots with little duck designs. She looked up with a smile. "Nice wellies." She pointed to the doormat and told me to leave them there.

I toed them off.

Remarkably, her house didn't smell like cabbage. I told her this without thinking and her smile widened.

"That's because we have company today," she explained.

She picked up her teacup and saucer and led me not into the kitchen where we'd always sat but to the dining room, where tea and snacks were laid out on the formal dining table and where two strangers, a man and a teenage boy, were sitting.

The other three cats came running as Mrs. Figg and I entered the room. The man and the boy stood up, their chairs pushed back. The moment felt rife with ceremony, so I put Mr. Paws on the floor and greeted the other cats that were rubbing against my calves. Mrs. Figg took the seat next to the man, leaving me the chair next to the teenage boy on the opposite side of the table. He pulled out the chair for me.

"Well," said Mrs. Figg, smiling, "that's all of us. This here is Buffy Summers, new American to the neighborhood. Fifteen years-old and already a friend to old ladies with heavy cat-food laden bags everywhere." She inclined her head toward the man beside her, "This is Remus Lupin,"

"Hello, pleasure to meet you." Remus smiled and extended his hand across the table. We shook. His light brown hair was damp, its ends darker and dripping onto the frayed collar of his checkered blue dress shirt. He looked pale and exhausted but the smile stayed in his eyes long after it left his mouth.

"Hi, nice to meet you," I said.

Mrs. Figg turned toward the boy next to me—"and that's Harry Potter—he's fifteen also. Lives on Privet Drive."

At least someone had a normal name around here. I was beginning to suspect all Brits had kooky names like Arabella and Remus. I said this aloud and Harry grinned widely. At once he seemed to loosen up.

As we shook hands he raised his eyebrows—"Nice day, isn't it."

His straight black hair stuck up in the back as if he'd just rolled out of bed. A lightning-shaped scar near the center of his forehead. Behind his glasses his eyes were an incredible shade of emerald green, brilliant and clear like the ones in colored contacts commercials. Eyes you could swim in.

I glanced sidelong at our host. "The best. Mrs. Figg sure knows how to pick 'em."

She covered her eyes with one hand, irritation in the gesture. "A momentary lapse in judgment. Honestly, it could happen to anyone." She shot Harry and me an exasperated glare. "You two smart-alecks sit down…and stop picking on this old lady who was kind enough to invite you into her home and serve you the best from her pantry."

"Yes, ma'am," Harry said, smirking.

Finally we sat down.

Mrs. Figg poured me a cup of tea on a saucer from her cat-eared teapot. The steam rose in a mushroom-shaped white puff that quickly lost its form. The kitties swarmed around my feet. I reached down and petted them.

"So, Miss Summers, what part of the country do you hail from?" said Remus.

"Sunny—California. L.A." I almost didn't catch myself. I sipped my tea. It was burning hot and left my tongue stinging. "Call me Buffy. Only my principal called me Miss Summers. And no good ever came of that."

Remus tilted his head to one side, his thin mustache curling upward. "Really? I didn't imagine you for a troublemaker." He selected a scone from the porcelain tray and nibbled it. "So, why did you forsake Sunny L.A. for the glooms of London?"

"Family relocation. My Dad got a job offer he couldn't refuse, and Mom and I were more than happy to give the expatriate lifestyle a try." Dr. Michelson said a change of setting might prove beneficial for my condition.

"I lived in New York myself until three years ago," said Remus. He told me that after he finished school he had trouble finding work, so he had traveled doing odd jobs—waiting tables in Ireland, manning highway tollbooths in Germany. His voice was hoarse but at the same time calm and even. By Mrs. Figg's and Harry's surprised expressions, I gathered that they were also hearing this for the first time. Remus cradled his teacup on both hands, rotating the cup with a faraway look over his face. He said shuttled from this place to that, country to country, language to language. It had been terribly exciting, seeing new places and learning how differently people lived. But then he was in his thirties and getting too old for that life.

A mentor of his suggested he go to America—land of opportunity—so he went. There he settled in New York, rented a dingy studio in the basement of an apartment complex in the Bronx, and signed with a cab company. I've never seen people as barmy as they drive in New York, he laughed. "Sometimes in my dreams I still hear the din of cars horns and the beeping of cars in reverse. And see a sea of yellow-tops, and the steam rising from the sewer covers in the winter, and hot dogs sweating grease on the stands." He shook his head, smiling. The people he drove, so many others like him, strangers in a strange land, some not even able to speak the language. Soon he had the idea that he'd be able to make a living by teaching foreign languages, there was such a demand. So he started moonlighting, tutoring a few tenants in his building at first. Word got around and more people came. It didn't pay very well, but it was rewarding work. Eventually he put in his two weeks' notice and took up teaching full-time. "But the west coast, I never had the chance to visit," he said, pouring himself more tea.

I leaned back in my chair. Seeing the opening, Tufty jumped into my lap and poked its nose into my cup. Then it spotted the tray of scones and made to lunge across the table, paws outstretched. I caught it around the belly, encircling it in my arms so it couldn't move. "Stop that," I said to it. It gazed up at me, its eyes patiently furious, its tail twitching, its neck straining forward like a giraffe's.

"Tufty!" cried Mrs. Figg, "You know better than that!"

Immediately Tufty plunked down on my lap, head down on its paws.

"You know," I said, "Sometimes I think the cats _understand _you."

A look passed between Mrs. Figg and Remus.

She smiled. "The cats and I have an understanding."

"When did you move in?" Harry asked.

"Beginning of this month." I looked down at my watch for the date but realized again that it was broken.

"Have you any plans for the summer holiday?" Remus said over the rim of his teacup.

I shrugged. "No. Exploring the lay of the land is all."

At this Harry turned to me and sighed. SMELTINGS was printed in block letters across the front of his t-shirt. It was a sad faded shade of gray that I guessed at one time had been black. "Well, there's not much to explore in Little Whinging besides the play park and the corner store, speaking from experience."

"You're kidding."

Harry turned to me, one elbow on the table. "I forgot to ask you earlier, but do you happen to be Mark Evans's third cousin five times removed?"

"Who? What?"

"I just thought—you fit his description so well."

"Whose description?"

"Dudley's, my cousin—blond hair, not much neck, vast as ever." He scowled. "He stomped home the other day asking his mum what it meant to be someone's third cousin five times removed. Had a bit of a fit when she informed him that it meant the person would be great-great-grandparent's age and started muttered about some blond tart with an American accent who cheeked him at the play park. He wouldn't shut up about it for the rest of the day."

My mouth fell open. "That juvenile delinquent is your cousin?"

He sighed. "Tragic, isn't it." He lowered his voice like he was sharing a secret. "And what's worse, I think he fancies you. This morning he even asked _me_ if I'd seen you around."

I let this sink in. It seemed both ridiculous and plausible now that Dudley would offer me booze while he was hanging out with his gang at that street corner last night. No wonder he looked so offended when I asked him if he'd put a roofie in the beer. On second thought, I wouldn't put that past him. For one brief horrible moment Dudley's pink bloated face with lips puckered flickered in my mind. I shuddered. Note to self: avoid all possible paths leading to meaty cantaloupe face.

"Ew."

"My condolences," said Harry. I couldn't decide whether he was teasing or being serious, probably both.

We observed a moment of silence, a particularly loud thunder clap followed by a flickering of the lights. Then Mrs. Figg steered the conversation to less unseemly topics.

After tea I helped Mrs. Figg clear the table and take everything into the kitchen. The cats, seeing the food depart, took their leave of the dining room and climbed on the couch in the living to watch the rain outside the bay window. I leaned against the counter as she loaded the used cups and saucers into the dishwasher.

"They seem nice."

"That's because they are nice." She put the uneaten scones into the Siamese cat-shaped cookie jar and turned to face me, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. "That Harry's a fine boy. It would do you well to meet people your own age."

He's not my age, I started to say before I remembered he was. I had a sudden, obvious thought. "You're not trying to set us up, are you?"

She stared at me for a moment and then smiled in a knowing way that was kind of annoying. "I wouldn't," she said.

I looked out the kitchen window, the rain outside as fierce as ever, lashing against the panes. Mrs. Figg invited me to stay a little longer to wait out the rain. The time on her kitchen wall clock was ten to five. I told her I had to go.

Back in the dining room Remus and Harry were talking quietly together.

"It was nice meeting you," I said. "I'm gonna head home now before my parents get home and start to worry."

Remus frowned. "Won't they worry about your walking home in the thunderstorm?"

"Probably. But not if they don't find out."

At that Harry sniggered.

Remus stood. "Let us walk you back. Just as well, it's high time Harry and I should be going."

Mrs. Figg came into the room and agreed with him. Security in numbers, she said, and sent us away with plastic-wrapped scones leftover from the afternoon tucked under our arms, the rain falling around us in silvery ropes from dark clouds so close to the ground it seemed as though the sky was falling in.


	2. 2

2

The next morning I took an early stroll to the golf course, through the wide sloping hills enclosed by a long white orthogonal fence where men in snazzy pants were already swinging their irons to the clear sky. On my way back, the sidewalks were laden with traffic—joggers, baby-stroller pushers, owners walking their dogs, dogs walking their owners. I kept expecting people I passed to tip their hat to me (even though no one was wearing a hat) and say, "Top of the morning to you, miss!" but all I got were a tight smile here or polite nod there. Along the sun-dappled streets: the sound of birds chirping like water whistles, leafy trees swaying like sea anemones, lawn grass so green and plush you wanted to kick off your shoes and roll in it. I wasn't the only one with the idea.

Across the street a door opened and a wrinkly bulldog loped out between the legs of a woman in pastel hair rollers, scampered across the green patch, took notice of me, and barked while the woman stood with her arms folded in the doorway, a cigarette tensed between two fingers, smoking with a slow elegance the way tiny-waisted, sure-voiced, immaculately made-up women in old black-and-white movies did. The dog kept this up for some seconds. But getting no reaction from her it wandered over to a corner of the house and lifted its hind leg, a golden arc landing on rosy blossoms. The woman unhurriedly finished smoking, dropped her cigarette and crushed it into the ground with a slippered foot, and opened her mouth and shrieked, much louder than the barking had been, "Bad dog!"

Since my release I've been thinking about the lives of others. That people are waking up and falling asleep, going to work and coming home, falling in and out of love, getting married and divorced, being born and dying, everyone, everywhere, all the time, each leading an existence as immediate and familiar, complicated and fraught, self-absorbed and absolute as your own. Yet we know and understand so little of one another. To the woman shrieking at her dog, I was just a teenage girl on the sidewalk. And to me, she was just a woman in hair rollers shrieking at her dog. As Mr. Michelson said: all we see is the tip of the iceberg.

Farther down, a black-haired figure was kneeling among the shrubs with his back to the street. When I got closer I saw that it was Harry. I'd been so taken with the rain the other day that I hadn't paid much attention to him. He was wearing another faded t-shirt, loose cargo pants, and dirty scuffed sneakers that had seen better days. Judging by the abrupt economy of movement he was using to shuck mulch onto the flowerbeds, he'd worked himself into a major sulk. Before I decided whether to stop and say hello he looked up and squinted at me.

"Hi Harry," I said, waving as I walked up his footpath and into the heady woodsy odor of moist mulch.

"Crush of Dudley," said Harry, a deep furrow in his brow straightening, his skin even paler under direct sunlight. When he stood up he was a head taller than me.

"I usually just go by my first name."

"Right,"—he smiled a lopsided smile of rueful apology—"I'm sorry to say I've forgotten your name."

"It's okay. Buffy Summers."

"Thanks, I was going to call you Bunny but thought that might have made it worse."

"You thought right. I get that all the time."

"So, Buffy Summers, what are you doing here?"

"Walking."

Harry checked his wristwatch. "At half past nine in the morning?"

"Yep, perfect time for a stroll through the golf course."

His eyes widened. "That's at least six miles from here. You _walked_ all the way there and back?"

I shrugged. "As modes of transportation go, walking's both safe and dependable."

"Mostly."

"Are you planning to mulch all the flowerbeds today?" I said, looking at the prim row of begonia bushes, azaleas, rhododendrons and more that I couldn't name, some with small waxy oval leaves, others with large fronds encircling his house.

Harry scowled at the flowerbeds. "And under all the trees and shrubbery out back too, unfortunately. Dursleys' orders." He grimaced while saying this.

Just then a car drove by blasting Cibo Matto so loud my breastbone thrummed in synch with the bass line. I turned in time to see theraked tail end of a sporty coupe. As I turned back to Harry, in place of the thrumming, a pang.

"Do you want me to help?" I asked.

Again, his eyes widened. "You want to help me mulch."

And again, I shrugged. "Who doesn't want free exercise for a good cause?"

"Trust me when I say it's not for a good cause, but I'd appreciate the help all the same. Blimey, Mrs. Figg wasn't kidding about you being the Good Samaritan type. Hang on a sec," he said and sprang away with a quick light step.

He came back from the garage with a pair of mustard-yellow leather gardening gloves that were inches too long for my fingers. I pulled them on and crouched down beside him in the grass and began spreading handfuls of mulch onto the flowerbed. The mulch was loose and flaky, and when I scooped it from the plastic bag, gnats rose from it and zigzagged into the air. After five minutes of working in silence, Harry wiped sweat from his forehead with a gloved hand, leaving behind a smudge of dirt.

"Harry," I pointed to my forehead, "you have dirt on your face."

He used a sleeve of his t-shirt to wipe his forehead. "Did I get it?" he asked and I nodded. "Thanks," he said, embarrassed, and I smiled because somehow the shared embarrassment of my knowing his embarrassment broke the ice a little and freed us from the obligation, as strangers, to impress .

After that we chatted about the weather and current events, which we quickly discovered neither of us kept up with, and turned to exchanging stories instead. By noon we were finishing up under the last yards of the tall privet hedges in the backyard and trying to one-up each other in tales of childhood trauma. Harry straightened and tugged off his gloves with finality. "Erm," he looked at me, "would you like to come in? I'll see what I can scrunch up for lunch. It's the least I can offer."

"Is your cousin home?"

"No. Aunt Petunia dragged him off to buy next term's school clothes. So I've been left all by my lonesome." He didn't seem too heartbroken by this.

"Oh," I said and followed him through the kitchen door and stepped into an immaculate kitchen. While Harry poured me a glass of water I stood staring at the expanses of uncluttered counter space, the gleaming pots and pans hanging in ascending size, the alphabetized spice rack, and my distorted image reflected at me from a toaster, a kettle, the dustless screen of a small television. It was like walking onto the set of a Mr. Clean commercial, with lots of As Seen On TV products as props. Harry chugged down a glass of water himself and rummaged through the fridge and cabinets. I wandered into the living and sat down on the couch. The coordinated throw pillows looked like they had been freshly plumped. The TV, VCR, and stereo remotes were lined up in decreasing size on top of the entertainment center. By the foot of an end table, a filing rack for mail, neatly sorted. You're more aware in other people's houses, I think, because you know you're not really meant to be there.

A minute later, Harry came in carrying a plastic tray the size of a manhole cover. He shoved aside the remotes and set the tray on the coffee table. Then he sprawled on the couch, one arm flung across a throw pillow, denting its furniture-catalog-perfect plumpness. "Sorry about the selection, Aunt Petunia has got us on the no-proper-food-in-the-house diet at the moment," he said, "pick your poison."

On the tray were: a loaf of flackseed rye bread, a sliced tomato, horseradish mustard, celery sticks, grapefruit, jam, humus, unsweetened banana chips, baby carrots, and a can of tuna.

"Don't be surprised if you start seeing me on the street corner begging for scraps. There's only so much"—he read from the label on the jar of jam with a look of disdain—"low-sodium, low-calorie, no added sugar, boysenberry preserves a bloke can take"—and shoved it back on the tray.

I pictured him standing with a brown cardboard sign that said "Will work for food" hanging by a string around his neck and giggled.

He turned on the TV and channel-surfed, switching every second or sooner, one truncated syllable or less. It was basically the most annoying thing ever. I kept shooting him annoyed looks while munching on carrot and celery sticks dipped in humus, but he didn't seem to notice, though eventually he stopped on a channel. "Hey, this is a good one. You want to watch?" he asked, and I said yes because he already seemed set on it. Onscreen an action-figure buff Schwarzenegger was scaring the daylights out of people in a dance hall with his blank-faced glare and big double-barreled gun. I watched Harry heap slices of tomato and chunks of tuna on a piece of rye and top it off with a smattering of boysenberry preserves. After Harry was done I told him I liked that he's a man of principle, and he grinned from behind his open-face sandwich that was sagging in the middle from all the weight and dripping tuna juice.

"It's the survival of the fittest around here," he said. "My tastebuds have had to adapt."

"What a life of austerity you lead."

He raised one eyebrow. "I'll say."

Harry ate two more creative sandwiches and I went to work on the banana chips. After the movie its sequel came on and we watched it, the graying white-washed hallway of Linda Hamilton's mental ward reminding me of another graying white-washed hallway. When the credits began to roll Harry made me wait downstairs while he went to his room to get something he wanted to show me, saying in a bad Schwarzenegger accent "Ah'll be baack."

Over the sound of footsteps, a door creak, whooshing flapping noises like wingbeats, and Harry's muffled coaxing voice, I flipped through a dozen or so channels, half of which were covering the O. J. Simpson saga that my parents and practically the whole world was following, then switched off the TV. I turned around at a shuffle of movement in the room and thought I was hallucinating. On his right arm Harry now had on a heavy leather glove that reached to his elbow. He held the arm bent in front of him, forearm raised level, on which perched a large snow white owl with a dark narrow beak, which it was using to nibble Harry's ear.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but that _is_ an owl perched on your arm, right?"

"A snowy owl," Harry corrected.

"Unusual pet," I said, remembering the brown owl I'd spotted in the neighborhood weeks ago. Maybe owls weren't that unusual. You never know with people who call public school "private" school, and private school "public" school.

He crossed the length of the living room to me, carrying the snowy owl. It flexed its wings out, feathers fluffing, and turned to Harry with a look that seemed irritated—if owls could get irritated.

"Sorry," Harry said, looking from me to the owl, "she's in a bit of a temper from being woken up.

"Buffy, meet Hedwig. Hedwig, this is Buffy Summers, Mrs. Figg's friend."

At the mention of Mrs. Figg, Hedwig turned to regard me with perfectly round amber eyes.

"You're the first snowy owl I've met," I said to Hedwig. "I bet they don't usually come as pretty as you."

It hooted at me in a way that sounded like approval.

"Don't encourage her," Harry smiled as he said this, and for the first time it seemed genuine.

Hedwig turned to him and hooted a second time, her lower eyelids blinking sleepily upwards. Harry took the cue and carried her back upstairs.

I walked over to the fireplace and inspected the sundries arranged on the mantel. There was a silver-framed wedding photo of Harry's aunt and uncle, horse-faced and whale-sized, respectively; a handful of posed family portraits with the aunt and uncle growing progressively older and Big D growing progressively fatter; a group photo of his wrestling team with him holding the triple-tiered trophy that was centerpiece of the shelf (to my immense relief, a track jacket covered the length of Dudley's spandex-covered body); and a current school picture of him practicing his best sneer.

"There aren't any pictures of you," I said when Harry returned.

He came up next to me. "There wouldn't be. It's easier for the Dursleys to pretend I don't exist if there's no photographic evidence."

This morning when he told me he was raised by his aunt and uncle, I hadn't thought anything of it. And when he me about Dudley's "Harry hunting" I thought he was just trying to one-up Ford making fun of my Dorothy Hamill haircut.

"Come over for dinner," I said, and as I did I really wanted him to.

Harry pressed a thumbprint over Dudley's face in the framed school portrait. "I dunno, haven't you been nice enough to me already today?"

"So why stop now? We'll call it even—lunch for dinner. Come on." I nudged him with my elbow before walking to the front door.

Harry followed, hesitant.

"I'm new to the neighborhood, remember? If you don't come with, I might get lost on the way home or something." I crossed my arms and eyed him expectantly.

He shook his head, a slow grin spreading across his face. "Yes, that must be a stretch after finding your way to the golf course. Shall we," he said, holding the door open.

"We shall." As soon as I stepped outside, a sudden sensation of ants crawling on my skin broke over the nape of my neck and fanned out along my back and arms. I glanced around to check if someone was hiding behind the bushes or watching me from the windows of his house. But as far as I could see, no one was.

"Is something the matter?" Harry asked and I realized I'd stopped in the middle of the doorway.

You know, Dr. Michelson's voice warned, catatonia and paranoid delusions are sure signs of refractory disease.

"Nothing," I said.

-

Back home Harry and I found Mom in the kitchen, redskin potatoes turning inside the humming microwave. She was cubing a zucchini squash. A bag of red and green bell peppers and some kiwis sat in queue by the cutting board. Seeing Harry's house made me see my homey well-stocked one in a new light, dimmed only by the prickling sensation that had lingered all the way home. "Hi honey," Mom said without looking up, "can you take out the mushrooms and cherry tomatoes from the fridge and wash them for me?"

Beside me, Harry stood riveted by the two bowls sitting on the counter top, one of cubed marinated beef and another of chicken. "MEAT!" he mouthed to me. His enthusiasm was almost disturbing.

"Sure, Mom," I said, putting a hand on the small of her back, "I brought a friend over for dinner, is that okay?"

She whipped around so fast she forgot to put down the knife and half of an uncut zucchini in either hand.

Harry, who had extended his hand to be shaken, saw the knife and somehow managed to keep up his smile. "Nice to meet you, Mrs. Summers," he said.

"Don't worry," I said to Harry, "this is how she greets all the boys I bring home."

Mom opened her mouth to say something to me—probably about why tonight of all nights I was bringing people over for dinner—but didn't, instead she turned to give Harry the once-over. "So, young man," she joked, pointing the knife in Harry's direction, "what are your intentions toward my daughter?"

"Only the best, ma'am," Harry answered with a winning grin.

Mom wiped her hands and properly introduced herself. I grabbed the mushrooms and tomatoes from the fridge and washed them in the sink, and Mom went back to cutting the peppers, kiwis, and potatoes. Once finished she asked me to skewer the kabobs on bamboo sticks, a task that struck me as a variation on a theme of staking. I must've spaced out because at this point Harry took over the skewering without having been asked and won brownie points with Mom, if her effusive thanks were any indication.

We carried the kabobs out back to Dad manning the grill, the smell of charcoal thick in the air, the warm yellow flame of a citronella candle flickering in the middle of the patio table. As the meat sizzled and the veggies caramelized, I helped Mom set the places while Dad grilled Harry with twenty questions to which Harry gave polite if terse responses. As we ate Harry kept declaring how much better this meal was than the grapefruit half for breakfast, energy bar for lunch, and meatloaf made with tofu-substitute for dinner he normally got at the Dursleys'. Hearing this, the glint of maternal instinct rose in Mom's eyes and she said, frowning at the sinewy thinness of his arms, "You're more than welcome at our house, anytime you want a square meal."

After dessert, Mom went inside to load up the dishwasher and Dad retreated to the living room and SportsCenter. Harry wasn't in much of a hurry to leave, so we stayed behind, shooting the breeze to the soundtrack of pulsating cicadas. After he had gone, taking with him the prickling sensation and most of the leftovers wrapped in foil, the day had long given way to the anemic light of preset streetlamps and outdoor wall lanterns. Afterwards I whiled away hours trying to imagine what it would be like for Harry to grow up in that house with his uncle aunt and cousin, but my profligate imagination failed me.

-

The phone rang early in the morning Thursday.

"Hello, may I speak to Buffy, please?" Mrs. Figg said, accompanied by faint meowing in four different pitches in the background.

"Hi, Mrs. Figg."

I carried the phone with me back to the kitchen table and flipped through the study guides I should've studied but hadn't. The pages were filled with doodles of Mrs. Figg's cats, tiny hand-drawn maps of Surrey that expanded by the day, reading lists of school curriculum books I never looked up at the library—documented proof of procrastination hard at work.

"Oh, good, you're home," said Mrs. Figg. "You're always out and about it seems, but if I called bright and early, I thought."

Mom came downstairs, tying the built-in scarf on her white silk blouse into a loose bow and pouring herself and Dad, who came in after her, each a cup of coffee. "Who are you talking to?" Mom asked as she set about making chocolate chip pancakes—the breakfast of champions, at least at la casa de Summers. I covered the receiver and told her. "Remember, we have to go soon," she said.

"And with you looking like a bit of spare part, we thought you'd be interested. You'd like to go, wouldn't you?" Mrs. Figg said.

"Go where?"

She sighed loudly into the receiver. "I don't know what you folks did in America, but over in England when a person speaks on the phone the other is expected to listen, and vice versa. Time and experience dictate this as the best approach, unless you've got a better idea?"

"I do have one. I'm trying to mind beam it to you right now."

"I wouldn't put all your eggs in that basket if I were you," said Mrs. Figg, but her voice sounded amused.

Mom came to the table and set down a plate of pancakes in front of me and another in front of Dad, then began to cut the pancakes on her own plate in clean triangles and squares—all without looking at me—a gesture I interpreted as laden with reproach.

"Mrs. Figg, I'm about to leave for the GCSE, so I really can't talk now," I said quickly.

"Oh! sorry dear. I didn't know you had prior engagements." Mrs. Figg did in fact sound apologetic, which was probably a waste of emotion. I doubt imagining myself rocking the SATs had any basis in actual ability.

"It's okay. Anyway, back to your question: yes, I would. As long as it's not today or Friday," I said, getting ready to hang up.

"No, no, I always take care to call well in advance—common courtesy and all. We'll just pop by at eight next Friday morning if I don't see you before then. Well, don't let me keep you. Good luck!" Mrs. Figg said, disconnecting before I could ask her who "we" were.

-

Twenty minutes later we pulled up to a large boxy rectangular red-brick building with a flat roof and white-framed square windows. Having been away from school for months, it felt strange to walk down the scuffed linoleum floor of another set of academic halls. In the classroom I'd been directed to, stale air and stress were putting pressure on the handful of high schoolers scattered among the student desks. Sitting in the desk in front of mine, a pretty brunette girl in a hot pink miniskirt and matching heels was feverishly whispering a prayer: _God, if you'll just let me pass, I swear to never do that…thing with Trevor Thompson again_. The overweight boy sitting across from me was furiously clicking a hidden pen in his pant pocket, his eyes squeezed shut beneath his wire-rim glasses and his lips moving silently in intense concentration. Two rows back, a girl in Birkenstocks was furtively popping antacids like candy from a five-hundred count jar she hid under her desk. Next to her, a boy slouched in his chair so low his legs were almost parallel to his head and was yawning so wide in abject exhaustion I saw tonsils. Everyone seemed very remote from my desk by the window. I hadn't imagined there could be a time when I might feel so indifferent about a test that would affect the entirety of my foreseeable future. Then the proctor passed out the exam booklets, and the task of solving matrices, calculating the nth terms of number sequences, etc. obliged my attention.

-

When Mom picked me up it was only an hour and forty-five minutes later. This seemed impossible, shocking even. Stepping outside, I was almost blinded by the sunshine. In the car she asked how it went, but all I could manage was a grunt. I was home in no time at all, cradling a half-gallon tub of cookie-dough-fudge-mint-chip ice cream at the breakfast nook. Outside, everything looked vibrant and clean, glistening like freshly washed fruit with water droplets still clinging to the skin—a day too beautiful to waste indoors. I put on sunglasses and changed into a bikini and stretched out on a lawn chair in the backyard, spent from the mental exertion. I woke up sometime later, a coin of drool on the chair cushion, birds muttered in the hedges. I checked for tan lines, then shifted onto my stomach and passed out again.

The second time I woke shadows had lengthened in the trees. I stood up and stretched, toasted warmth on my skin, my limbs languid and loose, and walked around the side of our house to the mailbox at the end of our driveway. One house down the street, an ivory-colored car the size of a boat came to a stop facing me at the intersection. To my surprise Dudley the playground bully sat at the wheel. His jaw dropped comically as he saw me. An older supersized version of Dudley, whom I recognized from the family portraits as Harry's uncle, sat boulder-like in the passenger seat. I went on flipping through the mail, then tucked the stack under my arm and headed for the house. Halfway up my driveway, I heard a honk and turned around to see another car lined up behind theirs. In the next second two jets of blue-tinted wiper fluid squirted onto their windshield. I saw the uncle reach for the wheel, and the turn signal blinked to life. Then the ivory boatmobile lurched forward and right, Dudley's face flushing the color of persimmons through the runny windshield, and was gone.

-

Over the weekend Mom and Dad took me on a whirlwind shopping tour of London. I knew bribery when I saw it. But after two GCSEs in as many days, a girl's entitled to a pair of black Italian-leather knee-high boots from Harrods, among other things.

-

Monday night, still in full appreciative mode, Mom suggested that I invite "that nice boy" over while she was fixing dinner. Not having his phone number or handy messenger cats to call my own, I walked to his house. The Dursleys' ivory-colored boatmobile was parked in front of their garage. I took a breath and rang the doorbell. Through the door I heard heavy approaching footsteps, then a series of locks sliding and bolts being thrown. Harry's uncle, whom I hadn't had and didn't want the pleasure of meeting, answered, his round hostile face and the middle third of his spreading torso, his stomach bulging over belt buckle, taking up my entire view through the partially open door. Television voices could be heard in the background. He looked me up and down and cut me off before I had a chance to speak.

"Whatever it is you're trying to sell, we're not interested. And if you think I'm going to squander my hard-earned money on some made-up charitable society scam, miss, you had better think again," he said, beginning to close the door.

I put my hand on the door and stopped him. "I'm not trying to sell you anything, Mr. Dursley. I'm just here to ask if Harry is home," I said, smiling.

"Who are you?" He narrowed his eyes, the effect making his dark eyes suspicious and beady.

"An acquaintance."

Clearly, this was the wrong thing to say. He shrank back, then, not wanting to lose ground, reclaimed his spot and renewed his efforts at shutting the door and was as taken aback as I was when it didn't budge.

"What do you want?" he demanded with apprehension and defiance in his voice, his double chin straining against his shirt collar.

"To extend Harry a dinner invitation, if he's amenable."

"You're not here to take him off my hands for the rest of summer, then?"

"No."

"Bugger," he muttered. "Boy, come here!" he turned his head and hollered, "Someone's asking for you at the door."

A moment followed where Harry's uncle tried to stare me down and I stared right back as three sets of footsteps raced to the spot behind him. Over his uncle's shoulder Harry's face came into view followed by Dudley's and his mother's, curious, scared, and nervous, respectively.

Already Harry was squeezing past his uncle, shutting the door in his uncle's face as Dudley shouted "It's you!" in a very confused voice, and pulling me down the driveway. The door opened when we got to the street, revealing his uncle's angry mug, Dudley and his aunt peeking out behind the cover of his meaty shoulders. "Come back here right this minute, boy!" he yelled. "I didn't give you permission to go!"

"That's all right. Don't wait up," Harry yelled back, laughing and waving.

"How dare you speak to me like that? You, you ungrateful little—" Harry's uncle stepped one foot out the door, intending to give chase. Just then a curtain parted in the window across the street, a woman's face peering out, and Harry's uncle bit back his words, glared daggers at Harry and me for several long seconds, and slammed the door shut with a resounding, door frame rattling bang.

When we'd gone beyond seeing distance, Harry stopped and released my hand. "I'd love to have dinner at your place, thanks," he said, grinning broadly.

"I didn't mean to get you in trouble," I told him, uncertainly.

"Not breaking any new ground there, I'm in trouble with the Dursleys just by still being alive. Besides, did you see the look on Big D's face? That was priceless!"

I thought back to the way his uncle had addressed him and, putting on a bright grin, said, "Speaking of Dud, have I got a story for you."

-

Harry showed up at my house every day after that, coming by earlier each day, and staying once for dinner. Together we would watch TV and listen to my parents' CDs and surf the internet on my Dad's computer, go for walks and mosey over to Mrs. Figg's for afternoon tea and biscuits and generally pass the time with the liberated insouciant air of students stuck home and without plans for summer vacation. I felt the creepy-crawly sensation whenever the two of us were alone—if Harry felt it too, he gave no indication—and once I could've sworn I smelled whiskey breath nearby when I was teaching Harry how to play Hearts at the patio table, Mr. Paws curled in my lap. It was surprising how uninitiated he was at the everyday games that had been the bread and butter of my childhood. But the wiggins were easy enough to ignore when I put my mind to it, and a small price to pay for enjoyable company and welcome distraction.

-

Friday morning at a quarter to eight, my bleary-eyed parents joined me in the kitchen. I put down the book I was reading and got up to pour them each a cup. "Isn't this a sign of the apocalypse? You two downstairs before eight?" I said as Dad sunk into the stool beside me at the breakfast nook, yawning widely, then began drinking coffee with his eyes half-closed.

"I hope not," said Mom. She loaded slices of bread into the toaster and took four eggs out from the fridge and cracked them over a skillet, breaking the eggshells cleanly in half.

Dad gave me a sleepy grin. "We just want to make sure our daughter isn't about to be carried off by a bunch of shady characters."

I burst out laughing at the idea of Mrs. Figg being a shady character.

"How do you like the book?" Dad asked before digging into the scrambled eggs.

The first time I checked books out from the local library, I'd found the book stack sitting in a slightly different angle to the corner of my dresser the next day. That one or both of my parents did this behind my back was both touching and completely annoying.

I shrugged. "Can't say yet, I want to see how it ends."

The doorbell rang while Mom was buttering her toast and she dropped her knife. I got up and my parents followed suit, Dad with his hands in his pockets and Mom at my heels. I opened the door to Harry standing there, his finger still poised over the push button. He drew back his hand and ran it through his messy hair, and smiled at me and my parents. "G'morning," Harry said. Dad spoke first, opening the door wider and held out his right hand. "Hello neighbor! Long time no see."

I looked around Harry as he shook hands with Dad. Parked along the curb in front of our lawn was a sporty two-door convertible with a glassy midnight blue finish and shiny chrome accents. Remus sat in the driver's seat, one elbow over the window top—the picture of repose. Mrs. Figg waved from the front passenger's seat. She had a leopard-spotted scarf tied over her hair and knotted under the chin, and also large eighties-inspired white-rimmed sunglasses that probably were from the eighties. Amazingly, she still had on her tartan housecoat. She was grinning like the Cheshire cat in that feline way she had. I waved back and told Harry I'd be right back. Brushing past my parents, I grabbed my purse from the kitchen table. On my way upstairs to find a ponytail holder, I heard Dad say, "I'm Buffy's father, Hank. And this is Buffy's mother, Joyce."

When I returned Mom, Dad, and Harry had relocated to the driveway. Dad stood by a shiny hubcap, running his hand approvingly over the patent-leather interior. He and Remus were deep in car talk, comparing the virtues of DIN and SAE horsepower. Mom was very politely asking Mrs. Figg, "So, when do you think you'll be back tonight?"

Harry alone sat unacknowledged in the backseat. "You'll have to get in from the front," he said, scooting to one side to make room for me.

I passed him my purse and climbed over the side of the car.

Harry grinned, "Or you could do that, I suppose."

As soon as I sat down I noticed that in addition to the new leather smell, a faint rotten meat stench emanated from the trunk, but decided I'd better not draw everybody's attention to it. Remus checked the time and said we had best be going. Mom took a step back, shadows of worry passing over her face.

Dad fished out his cell phone from his pocket and handed it to me. "Just in case," he said. "Our work numbers are on speed dial."

"Okay. Thanks, Dad."

"Have fun, honey." Mom laid a hand lightly on my arm, a brief but lingering touch.

"Don't worry about a thing," said Mrs. Figg. "We'll have her home before you know it, good as new."

Dad put his arm around Mom and gave the gleaming car hood a pat, and we pulled out, waving and saying good-byes.

The sky had turned a gorgeous pale blue. We headed south under high-hovering wisps of cloud, Remus maneuvering expertly through the light early morning traffic.

"Your parents seem nice," said Mrs. Figg.

"That's because they are nice," I said, and she laughed.

"Your car's amazing," I told Remus.

"Thanks," he said in his rusty-hinge voice, "I'd claim it for myself, but the car's on loan from a friend, I'm afraid."

"Is your friend by any chance going through a midlife crisis?"

Remus spoke to me in the rear-view mirror. "He's a bit too far along for that. Although if the car was red, I'd be awfully suspicious about a late-life crisis."

We drove past Little Whinging's well tended front lawns, rose bushes, azaleas, begonias, white and powder pink dogwoods, and plum trees with leaves the color of dried blood.

Mrs. Figg swiveled around in her seat. "So, how was the GCSE?" she asked.

"It made my brain feel like it'd been smashed out by a gold brick wrapped in a lemon wedge."

"On the bright side: you're still alive to tell the tale," Remus said. "Don't worry, I'm sure you did better than you think." He grinned in the rearview mirror, revealing unusually sharp incisors.

Up ahead were highway signs.

Remus opened the glove department and handed a CD binder to Harry. "How about some stirring music for our country drive," he said.

We soon picked up speed and merged. The wind now blew over us in dry uneven gusts that swallowed up our words, droned in my ears, and sent my ponytail flying streamer-like behind my head. Just in time Harry slid a CD out of its pocket and, leaning over the front seats, inserted the disc into the slot. Whizzing rushes of electronic sound blared from the speakers, joined by echoing piano chords and drums, then singing and staticky guitars. "Excellent choice," Remus shouted from the driver's seat.

The next CD track had begun to play, a jangling rock number. He sat looking out the rolled-down window and mouthing the words. The wind had pressed his hair flat on one side while the other side stuck up as much as usual, creating a comic effect.

"What does 'the bends' mean?"

"The decompression sickness divers get when they come up too fast to the surface, I think."

"So," I said, changing the subject, "where are we going to today?"

"Pevensey, in East Sussex. I thought Mrs. Figg told you all that."

"Yeah, she did, but I wasn't really listening."

Harry furrowed his brow. "You agreed to come when you didn't even know where we're going?"

"Actually, I didn't even know who else was coming besides Mrs. Figg."

"You're an odd one," he said, pretending to look at me askance.

We cruised down the highway, flanked on either side by tall skinny grasshopper-green trees with ramrod straight trunks, steel railings on both sides passing in a blur, and opposing traffic approaching like a never-ending procession of colorful toy cars. We passed by a seafood restaurant with the white front wing modeled in the shape of a yacht's bow. Hawks gliding in the sky. Then we turned onto a two-lane causeway and the wind strengthened. Then we were driving through a small town with old-fashioned red-brick two-story row houses with sloping brown roofs and protruding from them square chimneys from which jutted, inexplicably, smaller cylindrical stacks.

We parked under the high shade of a tree and got out, Remus coming around back and opening the trunk. He took out a picnic basket and two folding chairs crammed in front of a large plastic cooler and a white painter's bucket. We set off toward the shore, Harry carrying the picnic basket and Remus the chairs. We passed the row of white beachfront houses with oversized pyramid roofs and stepped onto the beach, the surface of the tan flat rocks bumpy under my flip-flops' thin soles. Seagulls wheeling in the sky, squawking like squeeze toys.

"I'm beginning to seriously question the British definition of beach," I said.

Remus smiled. "We're not exactly known for sandy shores."

"That's for sure. I don't get what the fuss over Brighton is all about."

Mrs. Figg peered over her shoulder. "You've been to the Londoner's beach of choice? I prefer this one myself. Much less crowded."

Which was true. Besides a couple walking along the water's edge and someone standing at the end of a long pier in the distance, we were the only ones there. As we walked the rocks under our feet grew rounder and darker. Soon we came to a low-lying fence running along the beach. Smooth dark round rocks on one side, sand on the other.

"Um, why is there a fence here?" I said.

Remus paused to touch the top of a square post, so dried out that it was cracked all over and the sepia of faded photographs. "This is no ordinary fence. This groin's been installed to trap the flintstones from washing away. All this used to be a mile out to sea. It's been a battle against silting and erosion ever since. Every few years freighters must unload more to replenish the very ground we're standing on. So while the beach may not be sandy, I feel it's rather grander for the lack."

"Wow that was didactic. I think you missed your calling as a teacher."

Remus lifted his hand, shading his eyes against the salt-sharpened light. "I was a teacher, actually, for a time."

"Really? What did you teach?"

"D.A.D.A." Harry said at my side.

"Art," said Remus at the same time.

"Dada?" I frowned. "I'm not sure I'd call that movement art, anti-art more like. Which was kind of the point, besides protesting World War I, right?"

"Sacrilege is what it is," Mrs. Figg muttered, taking the lead.

And we were on the move again, stepping over the groin and continuing onto a pier that extended far out to sea, like a long plank with no end in sight.

Harry glanced my way and shrugged.

"I wouldn't have expected someone your age to have read up on Dadaism," Remus said, his eyebrows raised.

Now it was my turn to shrug. What I remembered was this: the semester after Mom died, I audited an intro to art history course, wanting too late to resolve her life beyond our shared family experiences into meaning. Still, it had given me something like closure to view slide decks of artwork she might've seen in-person, to read bios of artists she'd probably studied when she herself was a student.

Harry studied me closely. "You don't happen to consider thousand-page books light reading, do you?"

"What? No… Why?"

"Because," Harry said, "it's about all I can handle having one Hermione in my life."

"Who's Hermione?"

"One of my best friends from school, who considers thousand-page books light reading, and as a result, is on occasion an irritating know-it-all."

"I never would've guessed."

We arrived at the end of the pier and set down our things, and Remus unfolded the chairs and invited us to sit. When no one took him up on his offer, he sat down himself, opening a thin clothbound book. Harry sat with his legs hanging over the edge of the pier and gazed down at the seawater some yards below, the foam eddying around the pier posts. For some minutes Mrs. Figg stood in her moccasins with their backs trodden flat, looking out to sea, her hands on her hips. Then she, too, settled into a folding chair for a nap in the sun.

I sat down beside Harry and looked out across the sea that was spangled with shifting coils of light, steel-blue in the distance. Stiff wafts of wind brought in the scent of salt and seaweed in a deep oceanic swell. I inhaled deeply and felt my heart expanding with my lungs. Remus cleared his throat—"If you'll indulge me a moment, this is rather apropos"—and began to read a maritime poem. I sighed and lay down on my back, on wood warmed by the sun, and watched the fast-moving nebulous clouds overhead as Remus read, his voice flat and muffled by the churning of the ocean. Five minutes later Harry leaned over me, his shadow falling over my face.

"What are you looking at?" he asked.

I patted the space next to me.

He stretched out at my side, his shoulder almost touching mine.

"The clouds"—I pointed—"it looks like we're flying backward."

Harry considered this for a moment. Then he nudged me with his elbow. "So, do you want to go for a walk or something?"

"Why, are you bored already?"

"Yeh, aren't you?"

"No, but the planks are a little hard on my back."

Harry jumped to his feet. "Let's go then."

Remus looked up from his book and met Harry's eyes briefly and said, "Don't wander off too far, please. We're taking lunch soon."

And we went. I took off my shoes and walked barefoot on the warm sand that lay between the water and the row of white beachfront houses with sloped brown roofs. We challenged each other to a round of skipping stones. I wiped the (ocean) floor with him so badly that Harry affected a pout that was so out of place on his face I couldn't look at him without cracking up.

The combination of sun and laughter made me giddy and without warning I pushed Harry into the surf. He went down with a surprised "oof!" and I ran for it, pausing just long enough to watch him emerge from the water with his black t-shirt slickly wet and clinging like seal-skin and his hair plastered over his head like a shiny dark swim cap, water drops dotting his glasses. Then he was up and running, his footfalls crunching over the sand. "Now you've done it!" he cried. "You're gonna to pay for that!"

I tore along the beach, barefoot. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed the wind full on my cheeks and arms—that feeling of buoyant freedom. I burst into a fresh bout of giggling again as Harry hollered more idle threats behind me. In my head I pictured him shaking his fist in the air. When I looked back, Harry, with the combined advantage of his wearing sneakers and my not, was closing the distance. Then the heel of my foot came down on something sharp, and it was all over.

A heartbeat later Harry was there, picking me up with one arm going around my back and other around my knees. For a brief airborne second, I saw the beach go blurry with motion before landing in the sharp slapping cold, disoriented and eyes stinging, the dense enclosing sound of running pipe water in my ears. I was aware that my arms, with each hand holding one flip-flop, were being borne up toward the soft flickering blue light. I kicked my legs and broke the surface. Harry was standing knee-deep in the surf, close to where I'd landed, a sheepish wide grin on his face. I ran at him with a battle cry, and in another heartbeat he went under.

By the time Harry and I got back to the pier, his sneakers squeaking wetly on the planks, Mrs. Figg and Remus were halfway through their tuna sandwiches, our lunch spread out on a red and white checkered square of cloth. She took one good look at us and howled. One corner of Remus's mouth twitched as he handed us our premade sandwiches on paper napkins, which we happily accepted. Shivering from the sea breeze, Harry took off his shirt and laid it on the pier to dry. That option being unavailable, I wrung the hood and hem of my hoodie, a long trickle of saltwater splashing by my toes.

After lunch and a checkup call from Mom and another from Dad five minutes later, we packed into the car and drove inland, the landscape transforming into an expanse of wetlands flat as a lake, covered by green water-grasses with browned tips and tall cattails with brown furry spikes swaying in the wind. Bone-white egrets wading in the shallows. Scattered trees and herds of unmoving cattle in the distance. We turned down a small road and parked along a saltwater creek. Remus went round to the trunk and came back with the plastic cooler and bucket. I discovered the source of the faint rotten meat smell, which grew overpowering as soon as Mrs. Figg opened the lid: cuts of raw chicken that'd been left out for two days. So they're nice and stinky, she explained as she unspoiled a length of twine from her pocket and tied a piece of chicken to one end and lowered it into the water while holding the other. Nasally assaulted and concerned about revisiting our lunches from the wrong end, Harry and I were thus introduced to the wonderful world of crabbing.

In a few hours, the wind had picked up, a chill in the air. We headed home with the convertible hood pulled up, enwombed in stirring music for the return drive. In the trunk, the paint bucket sat brimming with bluecrabs brandishing their raised pincers to no one. Entering Surrey, I spotted a shaggy black dog on the edge of the woods, barking silently at the road, and pointed it out to Harry.

"Stop the car, Remus!" Harry shouted. "Stop the car!"

"Why?" Remus asked, shifting into a lower gear.

Harry leaned forward on his seat. "Because there's a black dog by the side of the road, and it might be Sirius."

Mrs. Figg turned around in her seat. Her eyes had gone soft. "Harry, dear—" she sighed, reaching for his hand on the back of her headrest as the car sped up again.

Harry wrenched his hand away. "Remus, didn't you hear me? Stop the bloody car!" He was shouting now in earnest, tendons straining on his neck, his hands balling into fists. He looked ready to punch someone.

We were blocks past the woods and there seemed to be no intention of stopping. Remus gave Harry a long look in the rear-view. When he spoke, it was in a measured grave voice. "It's not him, Harry. You know that as well as I."

"You don't know that!"

"It's not him, Harry," Remus repeated softly. "You're not being reasonable—"

"Remus is right," Mrs. Figg urged.

"Sod off, the both of you," Harry said under his breath and sank low in his seat until his knees touched the front seat, which happened almost immediately because the convertible was tiny.

Then he said nothing, squinting into the distance outside his window so that someone who hadn't witnessed the earlier scene might've supposed he was just thinking. I was summarily forgotten, which came as a relief. The downside to being observant when in someone else's house, or car, in this case: the acute awareness that you're not meant to be there. After several long minutes we entered the familiar streets of Little Whinging, unfamiliar under the soupy glow of streetlamps.

Determined to salvage the day, Mrs. Figg twisted Remus's arm (literally) into stopping for dinner at her place. As though clued in to the sour turn during our drive home, the cats converged on Harry like a swarming purring welcoming congregation as soon as he went through the door. I followed Mrs. Figg into the kitchen and helped her scrub the crabs in the sink. Once when she was wasn't looking, I held out an unprotected finger in front of an open grasping claw and waited for it to close—just to see how it felt. After transferring them into a tall pot on the stove, I stood watch as they slowly turned red in the boiling water, but Mrs. Figg, dismayed by the sounds of the crabs' desperate last scrabblings, kept checking on the rolls baking in the oven and sighing. Through all this I heard Remus speaking to Harry, his voice soft and evocative through the door of an upstairs room. Mrs. Figg didn't bother to explain to me why Harry had made such a fuss over a missing/dead dog, and I didn't bother to ask.

Later, we devoured the sweet steaming meat, salty juices running down our fingers. Across the table, Harry's expression remained closed-off till, finally, I kicked him lightly in the shin, and our eyes met, the corners of his mouth slowly lifting into a smile.


End file.
